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On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Joseph P. McDonald manned the switchboard at Fort Shafter in Hawaii when he received the alarming message that radar had detected a large number of planes approaching from the north, heading fast for Oahu.
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Motorists who use the Pango mobile app to pay at parking meters in Scranton will get reimbursed for any inadvertent overcharges since Sept. 1, the new operator of the city’s parking system said.
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When the Scranton School District starts another school year this week, there will be no evidence that cheating on standardized tests was ever suspected.

The suspension of a teacher was recently reversed and disciplinary letters in the files of four teachers were removed earlier this year. The district has completed its investigation.

Almost a year after officials first learned about the state's findings, some wonder if the district should have handled the investigation differently.

Scranton was one of six districts identified by the state in September 2012 for possible manipulation of answer sheets for standardized tests taken between 2009 and 2011. The state Department of Education directed Superintendent William King to conduct his own investigation to determine whether adults altered answer sheets. The state accepted his findings, and based on the probe, Mr. King gave letters of reprimand to four teachers and recommended dismissal of another.

In January, the school board granted union grievances that removed the letters from the teachers' files. The dismissal of the teacher, who had been suspended without pay, went to arbitration. The arbitration was resolved, and the teacher, who the union or district never publicly named, has received full back pay.

"My member's civil rights were violated, let alone her union rights," said Rosemary Boland, president of the Scranton Federation of Teachers. "It was a very bad miscarriage of justice by our superintendent."

A person's entire career could have been destroyed by this, Ms. Boland said.

"There was not one shred of evidence," she said. "Mr. King is not an investigator. He was not trained and he should not have conducted any investigation."

Mr. King said he was only doing what he was directed to do by the state secretary of education and said he would not provide further comment on the investigation.

Solicitor John Minora said the board and he were "persuaded that the accusations against the teacher, while done in good faith, ... were not well founded."

He said it was unfair that the state directed Mr. King to conduct the investigation himself. Perhaps the district should have hired an outside agency, Mr. Minora said.

"The errors that happened and the reputations that were needlessly harmed could have been prevented," he said.

In February, state officials told school board members that the state may investigate former district employees who could have been involved in the possible cheating, board members said at the time. The department does not comment on possible investigations, a Department of Education spokesman said last week.

Director Bob Sheridan, said there was not enough evidence to discipline any of the teachers.

"I'm a retired police officer," he said. "I know to go by evidence."

He also said the investigation should not have been handled internally, even though Mr. King was directed by the state to do so.

"I don't think they should have put that all on him," he said. "The state should have come in."

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